


Wrecking Balls Inside My Brain

by Sohotthateveryonedied



Series: Joker Junior [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Movie: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Nightmares, Protective Stephanie Brown, Recovery, Tim Drake Has Mental Health Issues, Tim Drake Needs a Break, Tim Drake is Joker Jr., everyone deserves a stephanie brown in their life, gotta love duality baby!, his life sucks but at least he's got steph, it's angsty but it's cute, this is cute okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24761494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied
Summary: Tim has always been a quiet one—something Steph has been used to from the very beginning and even finds endearing at times—and his nightmares are no exception. He doesn’t make a lot of noise; doesn’t thrash or scream, so you wouldn't even be able to tell that he’s having one unless you know what to look for.(Just a lil post-Joker Junior timsteph thing to cleanse the palate.)
Relationships: Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake
Series: Joker Junior [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1547449
Comments: 10
Kudos: 202





	Wrecking Balls Inside My Brain

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so like. I found this story in my drafts the other day with no recollection of writing it?? Where did she come from?? I had like 2,000 words there with no idea of how I did it but honey I polished this fella and posted her because I'm DEDICATED. Also it's just cute so like. How could I not share it with you lovely folks. (I'm talking like this because I just watched a whole ton of Queer Eye so I'm filled with Jonathan Van Ness energy right now whoopsie.) (Aspire for greatness babes!)

Coming back hasn’t been an easy road for Tim. Not for any of the bats, really—having to watch Tim suffer with the knowledge that there was only so much they could do to help. The Joker has been dead for three years now, but his hooks are so deep in Tim that Stephanie finds herself wondering if he’ll ever be truly free. Some days leave her more optimistic than others.   
  
Unfortunately, tonight is one of the latter.   
  
Tim has always been a quiet one—something Steph has been used to from the very beginning and even finds endearing at times—and his nightmares are no exception. He doesn’t make a lot of noise; doesn’t thrash or scream, so you wouldn't even be able to tell that he’s having one unless you know what to look for.  
  
Tim sleeps curled on his side, completely still but for his chest which rises and falls faster than it should. His closed eyes twitch, eyebrows knitted and mouth twisted in an endless grimace. He hasn’t told Steph exactly what his nightmares are about, but being kidnapped, tortured, and brainwashed to the brink of sanity is a prime suspect.   
  
Steph sits up in their bed, watching him sleep as she ponders her next move. Should she wake him? She tried that once in the past, but in his disoriented state Tim lashed out on accident. Steph ended up with a black eye for three days. It wasn’t his fault, of course; he was confused and scared. It was a simple mistake.  
  
Steph put the experience behind her quickly, but Tim refused to sleep in the same bed as her for weeks after that. He apologized for what happened so many times that Steph told herself she would never try to wake him up from a nightmare again, if only to save them both the guilt.  
  
Luckily, Tim makes the decision for her this time. He startles himself awake with a choked-off gasp, eyelids flying open. He sits up, breathing hard and disoriented before he registers Stephanie beside him. He takes a shaky breath and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Did I wake you up? I’m—fuck. I’m sorry.” Purple rings under his eyes showcase remnants of sleepless nights.  
  
“It’s okay,” Steph reassures him. “I was awake anyway.” Fine, so it’s a lie, but it’s just a tiny one, right? It would kill Tim to know that his broken sleep schedule is affecting her as much as it does him.  
  
“It’s not okay. I’m sorry you have to deal with...all this.” Even sleep-deprived and exhausted, his guilt is a thick, tangible thing.  
  
“Hey. Do I look like a complainer to you?” She prods his side, and that grants her a flicker of a smile. She’ll take whatever she can get. And at least he’s not wracked by the horrible laughter this time, which has been coming less and less often. _He’s getting better,_ she tells herself.   
  
Tim cards his fingers through sweat-damp hair. “I’m going to ask Leslie tomorrow if she can prescribe me some meds. Something that will help me sleep better.”  
  
Steph hums, wrapping her arms around him and resting her chin on his shoulder. Tim presses his cheek to her hair and exhales deeply. “It looked like a bad one tonight,” she says. “You want to talk about it?”  
  
“No.”   
  
She arches an eyebrow even though he can’t see it. “Honey. You’ve been having these dreams for months and you won’t say a word about it. I don’t need details or anything, just...I want to know what I’m dealing with here.”  
  
“Trust me,” Tim says, shaking his head. “My fucked-up psyche isn’t your burden to bear. You don’t deserve to have this stuff in your head.”  
  
“So...what?” She pulls back to look him in the face. “I’m supposed to just sit here and watch my boyfriend suffer?”  
  
“No one said you had to watch at all,” he snaps. Then he catches the hurt that flashes across her face and his eyes soften. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—” He rubs his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just...tired and crabby, is all. But you don’t want to know about these dreams. Really, you don’t.”  
  
“Are they...about him?” Tim has been tight-lipped about the ordeal ever since he was deemed mentally stable enough to not require 24-hour supervision, lest he try to murder everyone in the room. Those were some of the hardest weeks of Stephanie’s life, which says a _lot._ Not knowing whether the boy she loved was ever going to be the same again was unbearable.   
  
But to her surprise, this time he shakes his head.   
  
“Then what—”  
  
“Let’s just say JJ has a...colorful imagination.” He grimaces.  
  
“Oh.” She can’t even begin to wonder what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. “Is he talking to you again?”  
  
“No,” he quickly assures her. “I’ve got him under control, I’m sure. But when I’m asleep it’s like a free-for-all.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
Tim bites his lip and it looks like he’s finally going to give her the answers she wants, but after a moment changes his mind. He lies back down and turns onto his side, away from Stephanie. “Never mind. Forget about it.”  
  
“No. No way.” Steph pulls the blanket down. “You’re not shutting me out when we _just_ started to get somewhere.”  
  
“Get where? Talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”  
  
“Are you kidding?” Steph combs her fingers through Tim’s bedhead and he leans into the touch. “Every morning I watch you wake up more exhausted than you were when we went to bed with no idea how to help or comfort you. I want to understand what it is you’re seeing so I can be here for you when you need it.”  
  
Tim sighs, closing his eyes. “Steph, you know I trust you. But it’s bad enough that _I_ have to deal with these nightmares. Have you ever thought that maybe my silence is to protect you?”  
  
“Protect me from _what,_ Tim?”  
  
“From knowing what it’s like and not being able to do anything about it. Believe me, it sucks.”  
  
She sits back and crosses her arms. “Try me.”  
  
Tim appraises her for a moment, takes in her unwavering stance. Lets it sink in that Steph is not backing down from this because _damn it,_ she’s sick of being a side character to her boyfriend’s problems. She needs to know this. She’ll never stop worrying until she does.  
  
Tim’s gaze drifts up to the ceiling in surrender. “It’s like...imagining the worst thing that could ever happen to you. The darkest things you can imagine becoming real, like your brain is specifically targeting your worst fears and making them happen just to torment you. Everyone you care about is suffering, and in the back of your mind you _want_ to stop it but you can’t because _you’re_ the one who’s hurting them.”  
  
He doesn’t meet her eyes, but Steph can practically _feel_ his guilt. She doesn’t say anything, though. This is the most Tim has opened up about his mental health in a long time and she’s not about to waste it. “And I know it’s not really me, but it feels like it is. JJ is at the wheel making me do horrible things that I can’t control, and it’s like I’m being buried under a million pounds of grief and shame and _happiness_ until I can’t breathe.”  
  
The more he talks, the easier the words come. “God, Steph, if you could see the sick things he makes me think about. And I know they’re not _my_ thoughts, but I can’t make them stop.” He shuts his eyes. “Last night he tore Dick apart until he didn’t look human anymore. The night before that it was Bruce with an ice pick. And then Kon, Cass, Damian…” His hand scrambles on the bed to grab Steph’s and squeeze it tight. “Tonight it was you. With a goddamn _hacksaw.”_ He shudders.  
  
“I’m sorry.” It’s nowhere _near_ what Steph really wants to say, but she can’t think of anything better. How does she match that? How does she console him when the bad guy is his own mind this time? She wants to wrap this boy up and protect him from the universe which has done nothing but hurt him from the moment he was born. They’ve all been through so much, the whole family, but no one deserves to be as broken as Tim.   
  
“I keep telling myself that it’s not real,” he says, “that I would never do something like that, but then I remember what I did to Joker and—”  
  
Steph grabs his chin and turns his head so he’s looking her straight in the eyes. “Hey. You can’t keep blaming yourself for that. Nothing JJ did was your fault.”   
  
“But that part was.” His eyes are glassy, shattered sapphires. “When I shot the Joker, it wasn’t JJ behind the wheel. I was in control and I made a choice. I didn’t do it to save Bruce, or myself, or the thousands of people he would have destroyed if he was left alive. I didn’t even think about any of that. I killed him because I wanted to.”  
  
“So?”  
  
Tim blinks. “What?”  
  
“When I found out what he did, I wanted to kill him too. Hell, I can’t even count all of the times I’ve wanted to kill a bad person just to keep them from hurting innocent people. And let me tell you, buddy, that having those urges just means you’re human.”  
  
Tim rises up on his elbows. “But you never _acted_ on those urges. You never murdered someone in cold blood. I have. I’m a murderer.”  
  
“Do you regret it?”  
  
“Of course I do.”  
  
“I’m not talking about taking a life.” She places her hands on the sides of Tim’s face. “Don’t think about Bruce’s bullshit code or the messiness of right and wrong in our line of work. Do you, Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, regret that the Joker is dead right now?”  
  
His eyes dart away as he considers it. “No.”  
  
“Great, neither do I. And do you know why?” She strokes Tim’s cheek with her thumb, meeting his gaze earnestly. “Because him being gone means that there’s one less monster in the world. It means that I get to be here, right now, with you. And I don’t regret that.”  
  
“But he’s not gone. The Joker might be dead, but he left me alive.”  
  
Steph wishes for a Lazarus pit so she can resurrect the Joker and put a batarang through his skull. Or five. “You’re nothing like the Joker.”  
  
“Part of me is. I can feel him in my head, messing with my thoughts, making me question what’s real. And I don’t know if it’ll ever go away.”  
  
This isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation. Tim’s mind is a ferris wheel of anxieties, knowing exactly what violence he is capable of now and struggling to believe that his past actions don’t mean he’s changed on the inside. Steph can’t imagine what it must be like, moving on from something like that, but he did it. He does it every day.  
  
It’s why there is no hesitation when she says, “You’re stronger than him.”  
  
Tim grips her wrist like it’s his only lifeline. “But what if I’m not? What if he gets out again and he hurts someone?”  
  
“He won’t.”  
  
“He already did! He made me hurt you.”  
  
“That was an accident. You were startled and I don’t blame you for that. We’ve both hurt each other _way_ worse than that in sparring mishaps, and need I remind you that I smacked you with a brick once? So we’re even.” She smiles, trying to convey as much reassurance as she physically can. “I’m perfectly fine now.”  
  
“It still happened.”  
  
“I don’t care.” Steph lies down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. He’s warm. “You can grouch about being a loveless monster for as long as you want, because no matter what happens I will still believe in you. I believe you’re too strong to let something like this ruin you, and the fact that you’re here right now proves it.”  
  
“But what if it never goes away? Every day I can feel him there in the back of my head, waiting to take control again. Sometimes I can’t even tell what’s me and what’s him.”  
  
“Bullshit. What did you feel back in that dream when he was doing those things?”  
  
Tim huffs what isn’t quite a laugh; it’s a sadder sound. “Scared. Insane.” He knots the bed sheet in his clammy fist. “Happy.”  
  
“Because that was _him._ His thoughts and feelings aren’t yours, Tim. They never were.” She lays her hand over his heart, feels it beat against her palm. “What do you feel now?”  
  
Tim trails his hand down her back, breathes in her blonde curls and lavender shampoo. “Warm. Safe. I feel you.”  
  
Steph smiles. “There. _That’s_ Tim Drake.” She kisses a spot just above his eyebrow. “And I don’t think the world could ruin him if it tried.”  
  
“You have too much faith in me.”  
  
Steph just moves closer, tucks herself into his side like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Good. Someone around here has to.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I implore you to comment and tell me which of the Fab Five is your favorite! (I'm talking about the Queer Eye version but now that I'm thinking about it tell me which of the Titans Fab Five you like too because variety is where it's at honey.)
> 
> [Feel free to mosey on down to my Tumblr!](http://sohotthateveryonedied.tumblr.com/)


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